Healing PTSD: Time to Get On Down the Road.

It’s Time for the PTSD, as they say, to get on down the road and for us to talk about healing. In the last post I did, I talked about figuring out that I had PTSD. Talking about that moment, the one where the light came on for me, was easy. Opening up on #PTSDchat, and FB for the world to see was easy also, and it was something I would never have done in the past. Too many demons telling me I’ll be judged, my parents would freak, etc. Today, if it kills what ails me, I’m doing it. I’m sick of living with the aftermath of my PTSD and the gift that just keep on giving; misery.

DON’T GET ME WRONG

MAKE no mistake; after a while, when I learned to (sort of) live with the incidents of my life that brought on the fear and the anxiety, I had no problem telling the world about my “injuries, hurts, and wrongs”, after all, it got me attention, sympathy, and face time. It was cathartic and that said, it also was a cry for help. During the telling, I had a chance to let some of the emotional charge out and through the tears, release energy from my body.

The comradery of finding, on occasion, souls that had a similar experience was validating. However, it didn’t close the big, fat, life draining hole in my heart and mind. I sat like this for many years, little to no progress, crying in my beer so to speak. Not to mention becoming physically ill. I couldn’t keep all that negative inside and not expect it to manifest in ‘dis-ease’, anger, and sometimes hopelessness.

OVER and OVER AGAIN

“HOW many times does the chicken have to cross the road to get to the other side; as many times as she is willing to try and get there.” There is another story to demonstrate what it’s like to not move forward and then you do. I’m paraphrasing this … ‘I walked down a path, there is a hole, I fall in. I walked down the path, there is a hole, I fall in. Take that times a gazillion.

Then one day I walk down the same path, I see the hole, and I TRY and go around, I fall in. I walk down the same path, I see the hole, I TRY and go around, I fall in. Again, times a gazillion.

In the end, after working to cleaning up my garbage, I can now CHOOSE to walk down another street avoiding the hole altogether, problem solved.

The moral of the story, I will keep doing what I do until I wake up and see the insanity of it, and waking up is a process. Once I wake up I don’t go down those roads that lead me into trouble. Remember, though, it’s a process only if I can get me to be willing to cross the road, otherwise I’m standing still and maybe going backwards.

What’s the road I’m traveling? The garbage I’ve told myself about who I am since my many, many piled up incidences. It’s the fear I allowed myself to live in and at the time, don’t seem to be able to change. That garbage is even more insidious because the fear is now higher than the incidence that happened. Fear of my past and similar incidents are making the letting go and doing the work tougher. Ask yourself this question and see if it brings up fear: Who will I be if I let all of this go? Now answer it; write it down.

WHO’S RUNNING THE SHOW?

HERE is my analogy for continuing to leave your subconscious running your show and living in a brain filled with lies about who you are. It’s a little graphic, and I think it’s very relatable. Let’s say a short while back you got a new puppy. He looked perfect, and you were sure he was for you. Your puppy has a hidden problem. Little did you know that this puppy has not been trained to control his bowels. You come home after a long day and find he has pooped all over your house. For someone else this would be a minor problem, they would clean up the mess and train, or get the dog a trainer. And, oops, you are not running the show; your subconscious is!

So to continue with the story, you running from your subconscious and not your conscious mind on the subject, have a strong aversion to poop and personal training, having had a bad experience in the past. Rather than clean up the mess and get a trainer; you start buying big, heavy rugs and placing them over the mess. Problem solved!

Only it’s not. Your solution is creating new problems. Your house now stinks and while the rug you put over the poop to keep it all out of site might look nice, it doesn’t take it out the stink. The rugs are piling up, and you are tripping over them. It’s impossible to invite anyone over to your home because it’s become a little too smelly and crazy place to visit. It’s time to take out the trash, the rugs, and the poop! This might take a second reading, so if you don’t get the relationship to PTSD, please go back to the top of this paragraph and read it again.

The last thing and this is so important to remember, when the subconscious come up against a stimulus that smacks in some often hidden way of the original incident, the brain can’t distinguish between the past and the present. To the brain, it’s all real. The panic brought up by a seemingly unrelated incidence feels very real and you’re hooked.

TAKING OUT the TRASH

HOW did I start taking out the trash? I got willing to stop living with the filthy lie that I was not good enough, that I was damaged goods, that I needed to be sick to get a break from a hectic, hard life. As they say in recovery programs, I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I got tired of living in fear. It’s not who I am, and I promise it is not who you really are, you just have to decide you are going to do the work and move through it. It is true that you cannot go around these things, you must go through them. You can not circumvent the process without a lobotomy. There is no other way. Whatever it takes, love you, fight for you! Be willing to be willing to let it go! Returning to life, a life worth living can be done; I and many others are living proof.

When I really started to get somewhere with my recovery, and after going to coaching school, I asked myself how living in fear was serving me; what was the payoff? This is where some of you reading will get angry with me and stop reading; there is a payoff. As a life and health coach I learned that we never do ANYTHING that does not serve us in some way (even when we are hurting ourselves and others). I know that to be true today, having seen through the lie. I decided to look at a particular situation for the payoff and there it was. For our purposes, we’ll look at my being physically sick.

Stress was really high from the age of twelve on. I started working as a very young girl; babysitting, working at a restaurant, working as a farm hand, pumping gas, etc. I didn’t get to play my summers away or my after school hours. Also, there was the fact that living in my home was a very dangerous place to be. The stress over the years, added to those of adulthood and other PTSD forming incidences, and the raising of two boys totally alone, was killing me. I didn’t know how to fix it, but I believe my subconscious and my body together knew how to help (serve me). When the stress would get really high, I would get strep, or a bad cold, something where I needed to be off work for a week. Being sick served me; it took the pressure off for a while. If you don’t believe you have a hand in creating/affecting your health, look at psychosomatic illness.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The bottom line: you have to start to look for a method that can serve you more than the fear does. There are many out there. I picked EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and it’s been very helpful in getting my life back. I’m also involved in a new process, with a guide (practitioner), that is amazing for clearing. Talk therapy did not work for me, and while I tried to take EFT and do it on my own, that was not as effective as when I did it with an EFT practitioner. I would not go to those very tender spots in my heart on my own. I needed support and a guide. Interesting enough when I did another type of process with a practitioner, we discovered I was outside my body, watching things from above like an impartial observer to protect my heart. Once I was guided to step back into my body, I was free to feel the feelings and let them go. There are other options out there that might be effective for you and you have to look and try them out.

The key is to let go and get started; do something to gain your freedom. Are you not, somewhere in your being, longing to be free of your dis-ease? Find a way to get yourself out of your subconscious. It’s never easy (until it is) to think we are sabotaging ourselves, be brave, consider that your dis-ease really is serving you, look for it! Give yourself permission today to do the work, to feel the discomfort; you will live through those spots; myself and others have done it, you can too.

There is nothing special about me; choose you and just do it. Getting well and living a full life is a choice, and so is doing nothing; doing nothing is a choice! One of my favorite sayings … if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you always got (W.L. Bateman, Henry Ford, and Anthony Robbins, in various forms). Stop the insanity in your life. Think about this: If someone or something outside of myself is responsible for my happiness, I am lost, I have no control over another person, place, or thing. If it’s me that’s screwed up, I can fix that if I do the work.